Instead, my father says a memorial Mass, because we do what is within our power. My mother asks me to come, but I can’t bring myself to do it. There is something I cannot stomach about those prayers for the faithful departed—they are so final, they freeze a person at the moment of their leaving. A real life walks out, and a door in our imagination closes. That’s that, we tell ourselves, it couldn’t have happened any other way. Nothing we could have done, no flowers we could have heaped on them while they were still among us.
